The invention relates to the field of data back-up systems, and in particular to a real-time online device drivers for a data back-up system.
A company's information assets (data) are critical to the operations of the company. Continuous availability of the data is a necessary. Therefore, backup systems are required to ensure continuous availability of the data in the event of system failure in the primary storage system. The cost in personnel and equipment of recreating lost data can run into hundreds of thousands dollars.
Local hardware replication techniques (e.g., mirrored disks) increase the fault tolerance of a system by keeping a backup copy readily available. To ensure continuous operation even in the presence of catastrophic failures, a backup copy of the primary data is maintained up-to-date at an off-site location. When backup occurs at periodic intervals rather than in real-time, data may be lost (i.e., the data updated since the last backup operation). A problem with conventional remote backup techniques is that they occur at the application program level. In addition, real-time online remote backup is relatively expensive and inefficient.
A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated storage network in which systems and intelligent subsystems (e.g., primary and secondary) communicate with each other to control and manage the movement and storage of data from a central point. The foundation of a SAN is the hardware on which it is built. The high cost of hardware/software installation and maintenance makes SANs prohibitively expensive for all but the largest businesses.
A private backup network (PBN) is a network designed exclusively for backup traffic. Data management software is required to operate this network. It consequently increases system resource contention at the application level. The backup is not real-time, thus exposing the business to a risk of data loss. This configuration eliminates all backup traffic from the public network at the cost of installing and maintaining a separate network. Use of PBNs in business is limited due to the high cost.
A third known backup technique is database (DB) built-in backup. The increasing business reliance on databases has created greater demand and interest in backup procedure. Most commercial databases have built-in backup functionality. However, export/import utilities and offline backup routines are disruptive, since they lock database and associated structures, making the data inaccessible to all users. Because processing must cease in order to create the backup, this method of course does not provide real-time capabilities. The same is true for remote backup strategies, which add additional overhead to DB performance. While not achieving real-time capabilities the installation of any of these backup scheme is a time consuming and difficult task for the database administrator. (DBA)
Therefore, there is a need for a remote online information back-up system.